Photos: Holly Johnson

Just found an awesome bunch of photos posted by Eau Clairian Holly Johnson to the You Know You are From Eau Claire When... Facebook group today. She says, "I was walking on a trail behind Dairy Queen a bit past Carson Park and stumbled upon a very large, broken down cement structure. There was evidence of large cement pillars and heavy metal poles reinforcing the cement. Just curious what this used to be in the day!"

On a similar post (11-26-13), You Know You are From Eau Claire When... group member Steve Johnson commented, "Kaiser Mill on the shore of Half Moon Lake, near the end of Tenth Avenue. … The mill, abandoned in 1924, burned to the ground in May 1930. The nearby Kaiser Box, still in operation [at the time of the fire], was undamaged."

UPDATE: And from group member Carl Quella ... "What we see is the foundation for the steam power plant for the mill. The works burned (if I recall correctly what the old folks used to say) sometime in the 1930s. The structures (several buildings) were made of poured concrete, some of them two storeys high. After the fire the walls stood in majestic ruin reminiscent of a medieval castle (they looked a bit like the remains of Dunluce Castle in Ireland, or Ruthven Castle in the Scottish Highlands) and came to be known to a couple of generations of Seventh Ward kids as "the old fort." One of decaying buildings contained an intact shell of a forge with a giant hearth. Set in leafy overgrowth, this city-bound Eden provided a children's sanctuary that no soccer field, theme park, Disney World, or Hobbs indoor ice arena could match: a place where children could play and exercise their imaginations and budding social skills free of interference from the adult world. Chopping down trees and building huts and fires were among the favored pastimes. ... The last of the walls were bulldozed into oblivion circa 1980."